This year's Youth Work Ireland Week will take place from Saturday April 5th - Sunday April 13th so get planning.......

Now in its third year Youth Work Ireland Week is a celebration of local youth services lead by local people, and involves thousands of young people, volunteers, members of the public coming together at youth events, this year we will be Celebrating Our Volunteer

As well as celebrations, Youth Work Ireland Week also promotes social inclusion, involves young people in decision making and highlights the range of youth work services provided to young people by staff and volunteers from Youth Work Ireland Member Youth Services.

As the theme of this year’s week is Celebrating Our Volunteers we have devised an arts activity that you can run with your young people and get entered into a draw to win €500 for your youth club/project and an ipad for a young person – all you have to do is to run our Hat’s Off to Our Volunteers activity.

This themed activity will encourage young people to decorate, design and have fun with creating a hat that can be given to volunteers and that in some way represents them, clubs and projects are then asked to take pictures and video footage of the activity process and final product and upload them to the Youth Work Ireland Facebook page. There will be a €500 cash prize for the best club/project hat.

For a fun element, if young people use the hat as a prop to take a “selfie” with a famous person, celebrity or prominent person in the community and upload the photo to Youth Work Ireland’s Facebook page, We will give a prize of an iPad to the young person who uploads the best “selfie”.

The Role of Partnership in Integrated Youth Services – An Youth Work Ireland Alliance Event: This will be a national office event taking place on Thursday 10th April in Dominick Street. It is envisioned that this event will be a follow on/check in from the Bringing the Strands Together Conference in 2013, where we presented and discussed our model of integrated services. The aim of bringing the member s of our alliance together is to further develop and understand the role of partnership in providing and delivering an integrated services model of youth work.

Get Involved with Youth Work Ireland Week's Social Media Campaign

FacebookHats off to Our Volunteer’s competition - make sure you upload your "selfie" you may winn €500 for your club or an iPad for yourself!

Twitter feeds - use our hashtag for the week #ywiweek

Share with us images, videos and post of the events you will be running during Youth Work Ireland Week

Aims & Objectives of Youth Work Ireland Week

Recognise, highlight and celebrate the role volunteers make to their local youth club and projects

Promote and celebrate youth work practice

Showcase local projects

Share best practice in youth work provision among MYS

Help build the Youth Work Ireland brand

Enable the voice of young people to be heard

Strengthen the links between the local youth services and national

Use the Week as a fundraising event for MYS

The week will also tie into the revamping of the Youth Work Ireland Volunteer Achievement Awards.